CHAPTER ONE
The evening was
warm. The orange glow of a cigarette appeared in the dark as a man on the porch
took a drag from it. The evening was quiet , the scent of creosote burned his
nostrils more than the stench of cigarette smoke.
The tranquility
was shattered with a squeal of tires that could be heard around the
neighborhood. The vehicle rounded the corner then shrieked to a halt with an
acrid scent of burnt rubber in front of the house where he was smoking. The
engine died with the harsh twist of a wrist and the key jerked from the
ignition as a woman jumped from the vehicle, a 2010 Hunter Green JeepTM
Grand Cherokee LaredoTM.
She hadn’t even
arrived at the front porch of the house before she started to yell at him.
“Where are they? Why weren’t the children at my house when I got home from
work?”
Smoke streamed
from his mouth and nose before he responded, “They are with their step-mother
visiting her parents in Hood River.”
She stopped short
of climbing the stairs, “What?” She stood there, breathing hard, before
responding, “this is MY weekend. You had no RIGHT to change our plans.” Her
temperament is such that she doesn’t anger easily, but once her ire is up, it took
a while for her to calm down. He knew that. He watched the pair as they argued,
and knew that this wasn’t a new thing between them. “Trent and I had plans this
weekend, with the kids...all the kids.”
“You know, it’s in
the parenting plan that we can keep the children a weekend a month if we need
too.”
“You had them LAST
weekend, this was my weekend.”
He stood up after
putting his cigarette out and walked into the house. He yelled back to her as
he walked in, “they will be back after the weekend.”
She stormed in
after him,The walls of the house were so thin that they didn’t keep the
argument from being heard from outside. “by then it will be too late. Our plans
were for this weekend. You can’t keep them away from me like this, they are my
children too.”
The neighbor
couldn’t see what was being done from outside, but having witnessed multiple arguments
between the pair a number of times, he figured the two were waving their arms
at each other, or pushing each other around as they yelled. He hollered at her,
“I know they are your children too, but we still needed them here. She took
them to see her parents, I mentioned that already.”
A snort was heard
before she responded, “oh sure you needed them here, they aren’t even HERE. You
are a first class jerk, you know that?”
“Go ahead, call me
names, but we chose this weekend to be OUR weekend.”
“I could have
called you worse.” A short pause before she continued, “You can’t keep them
away from me. You had them last weekend. That is TWO weekends in a row. You
should have called me.” The screen door slammed open as she stormed from the
house. “You had your weekend. Now, have them at my house before midnight or
I’ll kill you.” He hadn’t responded to her angry diatribe from the inside and she
acted as if she hadn’t expected one.
She used the
remote key entry to her jeep and unlocked the doors. Arriving at the car, she
jerked the door open and climbed in. Stabbing the key into the ignition, the
vehicle started up with a roar before she put it into gear and drove away,
leaving a layer of rubber behind. She was as angry when she left as she had
been when she had arrived.
***
The neighbor was
sitting on the porch half an hour later when the figure of a woman made her way
down the sidewalk to the front door of the house where the loud argument had
taken place. She entered, switched off the lights that had remained on then
left. He couldn’t tell who it was, but she looked much like the man’s ex-wife
height wise.
There were no
other sounds, but the lights still being on had been odd. When she left, she
locked the door as well and then walked away, going down the side walk the same
way she had come. The time was half past midnight when she left. He went inside
shortly after she had left. He made note of the time, then went to bed, being
careful not to wake his wife up.
